CEO of Business Leadership South Africa, Bonang Mohale says South Africa’s gross domestic product can only grow with the help of the private sector, accusing government of being anti-business.

The Finance Minister’s speech was delivered on Wednesday as South Africa tries to restore confidence in the country’s economy after several economic downgrades weakened growth this year.

Treasury expects the country’s debt to reach 3 trillion rand by the year 2020.

Raising concerns over Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba’s mid-term budget policy statement, Mohale says government has ‘squandered’ an opportunity to be the most robust and diverse economy on the continent.

By the minister’s admission the government is running out of money, this is the only time that it should be going to business and saying GDP growth can only come from the private sector and say let me extend an olive branch.

— Bonang Mohale, BLSA CEO

Anybody that says business is on an investment boycott is talking nonsense because business as we speak today employs 13.5 million people of the approximately 15 million people that are gainfully employed, government only 2.2%. How do you expect business to invest more when you call it White Monopoly Capital even though it is not white.

— Bonang Mohale, BLSA CEO

We need to be saying based on this fiscal cliff it means we can’t afford the luxury of bailing out state owned enterprises that continue to behave like unrehabilitated alcoholics every year coming for bailouts when we know that the root cause is because we are putting on people that are rapidly promoted, by and large incompetent, where the only recognition is loyalty to the President.

— Bonang Mohale, BLSA CEO

He says President Jacob Zuma is ‘wrecking’ the economy and that the African National Congress is creating more of a trust deficit.

Aired on 702 (26 October 2017)